"It all started with a question.
A few weeks back my sister asked me if I would sell my soul, and if so, at what price. Since that day I have been repeatedly asking other people those same questions, online and in the real world.
Those questions and why they felt the way they did, and I learned something. No matter which position they chose, whether they believed they would, or would not, or if selling one’s soul was even possible, almost everyone who said they believed in the “soul” seemed to view it as something separate from them.
It didn’t matter how people thought of the soul either, some thought it was just an echo of your mind and body that lives on in the afterlife, while others called it the source of emotions in this life.
It’s strange to me that so many of us see this idea of “I/Me/Myself” as something separate from the rest of, well, everything really. In modern days, people seem to think of themselves as a little something or other that is inside of them, and the majority of people these days seem to place that something somewhere in their head.
I would have thought originally that this concept of “Me-ness” would be synonymous with the soul for many people, but that was defiantly not what I came to see. People think of themselves and their soul as separate, just like with their bodies.
We say things like “My finger” and “My feet” as if they weren’t really a part of the “you”, it’s even more interesting in languages like Spanish, where there isn’t even a possessive involved (e.g. “My head hurts” is “Me duele la cabeza” lit. “The head hurts me.”
Even if we make the argument that saying “My ears” makes sense linguistically, it still strikes me a strange that we think of our bodies as separate from us, and that we are separate from the rest of the world, but that’s another topic.
My point then, is this. Of everyone I spoke with, everyone whose answers I read, not a single one stated that they and their soul composed a single, inseparable, whole being.
Why?"
So, I spent some time thinking about it, and replied with this:
There are four "identifiable". Most people claim three, but it's only because defining the fourth is something of a struggle. You have mind, body, soul, and contiguous consciousness.
Mind is that which produces thought, records memory, drives the body.
Body is the physical existence.
Soul is that which produces feelings, dispositions, desires and irrationality.
Contiguous Consciousness (CC) is that which experiences these things and applies a sense of continuity. That which can not be separated.
It is obvious why your CC is not your body, but what about soul? Most people will confuse CC and Soul because they have no word for CC readily available. They use Soul possessively, but then call themselves The Soul. The idea that you could separate you from the Soul remains. It is harder still to understand why your CC is not your mind. But there is good reasoning behind it.
Take for example memory. When you remember something, the memory is enacted in a coalescence of firing neurons and translated into an image. That portion is your mind. That which "sees" the picture, that which steps back and can experience it, is your CC. So when people say "I", they mean the abstract existence that exists slightly above all other functions of that life, and experiences it.
That is why you possess a thought. That is why you possess that hand which hurts you. That is why possess "yourself".
I call's 'em as I see's 'em.
